Israeli troops withdrew from all but five points in south Lebanon on Tuesday, February 18, allowing displaced residents to return to border villages largely destroyed in more than a year of hostilities. Israel is "temporarily remaining in five strategic high points" in southern Lebanon, Foreign Minister Gideon Saar said Tuesday, the deadline for Israel to withdraw under a November 27 truce deal. Holding the locations was "necessary for our security," Saar added. "Once Lebanon fully implements its side of the deal, there will be no need to hold these points," he told a press conference in Jerusalem.
"The entire village has been reduced to rubble. It's a disaster zone," said Alaa al-Zein, back in Kfar Kila in southern Lebanon after the delayed withdrawal deadline expired Tuesday morning under an Israel-Hezbollah ceasefire deal. Unable to reach Kfar Kila by car because of the rubble and army restrictions, residents had parked at the entrance of the village and returned on foot. Many were returning to destroyed or heavily damaged homes, farmland and businesses after more than a year of clashes that included two months of all-out war ended with a November 27 ceasefire.
Lebanon said any Israeli presence on its soil constituted "occupation," warning it would refer to the United Nations Security Council to push Israel to withdraw and that its armed forces were ready to assume duties at the border. Lebanon's army announced it had deployed in 11 southern border villages and other areas from which Israeli troops have pulled, starting Monday evening.
In a joint statement, UN envoy Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert and the UNIFIL peacekeeping force said that at "the end of the period set" for Israel's withdrawal and the Lebanese army's deployment, any further "delay in this process is not what we hoped would happen" and a "violation" of a 2006 Security Council resolution that ended a past Israel-Hezbollah war.
Jonathan Conricus, a senior fellow at US think tank the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and a former Israeli army spokesman, said that once Lebanon's army was "fully deployed" in the south, the Israeli army "will likely complete its withdrawal... as long as Hezbollah continues to adhere to the agreement."